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Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

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Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#261

Post by kwhitefoot »

sharken wrote: post #34
logifail wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving (Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit? I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, he…

A modern car with cruise control, either adaptive or not, will make the task of keeping to the speed limit a breeze. The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.

Teslas recognize speed limit signs. Driving on Autosteer my Model S respects speed limits unless it recognizes that it is on a dual carriageway (divided highway for US readers) in which case it allows you to speed if you want to but warns you that you are over the limit.

Mercedes have had this feature as an option for many years.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#262

Post by kwhitefoot »

ghaff wrote: post #84
sharken wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern car with cruise control, either adaptive or not, will make the task of keeping to the speed limit a breeze. The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.

I haven't used (non-adaptive) cruise control in years. I find that a lot of the time in the Northeast US roads are busy enough that you have to be constantly dropping out of cruise control or end up driving in ways that are suboptimal other than for keeping the cruise control active. To be honest, I just stopped using it at some point and just don't think to use it even when it's a match for conditions. When I get ad…

Adaptive/traffic aware cruise control makes life so much easier, especially in heavy stop-go traffic. Tesla's Autosteer works really well.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#263

Post by cryptonector »

devilbunny wrote: post #247
cycomanic wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps you are in Europe, where speed limits are generally just the natural speed for the roads they're posted on, and the roads are designed for natural speeds that are appropriate for their uses. Lucky you, if so. What are you talking about? With the exception of Germany all countries in Europe have maximum speed limits and I have no idea what you mean by natural speeds. Sweden which has highways that are in bet…

85 mph is on one road skirting Austin, Texas. It's 146 km long. That's it. Everything else is 80 (~130 km/h, actually a little slower) or less, and even 80 only applies to western roads with pretty much nothing around. But if you drive in the parts of the US where most people live, you're looking at 70 (a bit over 110), or 65 (~105) in rural areas. But those 105-112 km/h limit roads are in most states, even when the…

You're talking about posted speeds. There are long stretches of other highways in the Austin area where, if traffic conditions allow, you can safely drive much faster than the posted speed limits. This is and has been true over much of the U.S. for decades.

One time I was driving on the NJ turnpike, passing a car at about 100mph, and far behind me, on my rearview mirror, I saw cars gaining rapidly on me and flashing their highbeams almost desperately. I barely managed to get in the right lane ahead of the car I was passing, and those cars that had been far behind passed me at what must have been 150mph. They were all beemers and such. Now, I wouldn't do that, but apparently that was a common sight at the time -- young drivers driving rich New Yorkers cars between NY and FL when their owners were flying to FL to spend the winter or back to NY for the summer. I've driven on quite a few highways in the U.S. where 80mph wasn't breaking a sweat and where I believe 100mph would have been perfectly safe weather and traffic allowing. I'm quite certain that our highways are simply designed for much higher speeds than posted.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#264

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #249
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SCOTUS ruled in 2020 government agents can be sued for violating constitutional rights This…has always been the case? It’s a raison d’être for SCOTUS.

Look up "Qualified immunity" and "civil asset forfeiture"

Sorry, misread “agents” as “agencies.”

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#265

Post by vkou »

alistairSH wrote: post #254
vkou wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the 'natural' speed limit of a freeway is a death sentence in the event of a crash. I have zero sympathy for this. If you're doing 20 mph over the limit, you shouldn't be driving, whether it comes from taking away you car, or from putting you in a cage for a few weeks.

In that case, the road isn’t fit for purpose.

It's not the road that isn't fit for purpose, it's the human body plus the modern automobile that's not fit for safely handling a crash at 80 mph.

Either build better humans, better automobiles, or slow down.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#266

Post by 1123581321 »

hedora wrote: post #241
1123581321 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means to use posted speed limits to decide what is a safe speed, rather than to evaluate the actual risk or at least have some model for what makes a number unsafe other than what the sign says. Your method, picking a number based on pedestrian survival rate, wouldn’t be that.

Ah, but posted limits are a terrible signal of safety, at least in all the states I've lived in. One state likes speed traps for out of towners, so the speed limit is 55mph (and not enforced) on 1.5 lane gravel country roads, but 35 for four lane divided roads just outside city limits. The other state decided to upgrade the roads in affluent cities/towns so existing speed limits would be 10-20 mph too low, but then d…

Exactly so. And those particular examples (lowering them for revenue or aesthetic purposes) can actually mean decreases in safety and wellbeing, beyond the ordinary dangers of arbitrary set speeds, as stakeholders internal or external to the police department pressure officers to spend too much time tending the road.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#268

Post by [deleted] »

jason-phillips wrote: post #33
hammock wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops get more benefit of the doubt there than anyplace I’ve seen. And the cops, prosecutors and judges are in close coordination.

I see, thanks. I suppose I too live in a pro-cop area then. The police, judges and county attorneys all know each other and work together quite a bit. I know them and they know me. I suppose the way I handle the situation is to not break the law and not treat them like we inherently have an adversarial relationship. From my perspective, having the local community support first responders is a good thing and works ver…

[deleted]

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#269

Post by vkou »

advisedwang wrote: post #35

This is all under a warrant. Of course police can and do get location records from cell companies with a warrant, and it doesn't seem like a huge stretch for a warrant to require the cell company to "ping" to get the most quality location data. The problem here is the judges granting the warrants. Judges in Virginia are chosen by legislatures [1], which means they're accountable to political establishment who in turn…

> Judicial oversight and judicial elections are needed.

If you think judicial elections will produce less authoritarian judges, you probably fail to realize that most of the people who care deeply about electing judges are a tough-on-crime light-on-civics bloc.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#270

Post by eganist »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #22
eganist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.

Considering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.

Virginia is ranked 35th in deaths per 100 million miles (0.96), and it's not as if people don't drive either, as it's ranked 12th in miles driven. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York all log more miles driven and less people dead per million miles.

So it doesn't really seem like Virginia's insanely restricting laws are actually helping.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-a...

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